Soccer Round Up

We interrupt this blog for a summary of my indoor soccer career to date:

Games played: Approximately 25

Injuries: torn left quad, torn right quad, sprained right ankle, sprained right knee, broken right index finger, pulled right and left hamstrings

Injuries found debilitating: Both quad tears for a total of 6 games missed

Gear purchased: red jersey (from Goodwill), blue shorts (from Goodwill), turf sneakers (from Sports Authority), soccer socks (from GI Joe's), shin guards (from GI Joe's), 3 Ace bandages (from Fred Meyer), two leg braces (from GI Joe's), ankle brace (from Rite Aid)

Goals scored: 3

Goals intentionally scored: 1

Goals let in playing goalie: Upwards of 12

Conclusion: I am not 18 any more

This is why I teach middle school

Tuesday: Math Major is telling Who Me? all of the Spanish he knows. He then gets very quiet so I won't be able to hear what comes next- except, of course, I can. He says to Who Me?, "And puta." Who Me? asks him what it means. Math Major replys, "Either the 'B' word or queer."

Note for our non-Spanish reader: Puta means prostitute.

Wednesday: KO is doing his math homework while repeating to himself in a sing-sing voice, "Poopy, poopy, poopy, poopy, poopy...." in an attempt to drive everyone crazy. He succeeds at this so I ask him to stop. A couple of minutes later, still working on his math, he starts to say to himself, "buttocks, buttocks, buttocks, buttocks...."

Role call: additions and subtractions

    Z
    CC
    ACDC
    Math Major
    Let's Ride Bikes
    Head Ache
    C
+  Miss Popularity
_____
       7 - starting point

+   Who me? (new eligibility as ED, added to my caseload)
+   Slick Rick (Returned from longterm suspension)
+   TS (moved into district)
______
      10

-    Slick Rick (placed at day treatment center following repeated suspensions)
-    TS (non-attendance following being kicked out of Dad's house)    
+   TS (re-enrolled)
-    TS (moved)
+   TS (re-enrolled)
-    TS (dropped out/moved/refused to attend)
______
      8

+ RB (moved in from different district)
+ School much? (Moved in from different district)
+ Mike Tyson (transferred from different school following total of 14 days of suspension)
+ WW (moved in with Dad following running away from bio-mom in different state)
______
     12

-   Who me? (moved in with Dad in different district)
-   Head Ache (moved to different district - mom lost Section 8 housing)
______
     10 - ending point?

(Possible additions: Jehovah &  Smiles, transferred to my caseload following new eligibilities)

What do I teach?

On my way into the school today, a student I don't know asked me what I taught. It's a good question that I didn't have an answer for. I didn't want to say, "special ed." I also have abandoned my previously prepared answer of, "I help student learn who have a difficult time behaving in school" because I don't want my student labelled as "the bad kids." What I should have said was, "I help make the school a place where everyone can learn." That thought occurred to me a minute later. And then I thought of a diagram that describes what I do:

Special Ed Life

Z is a gas. He's fairly incapable of interacting with most people, even those he knows really well. Every day I greet him warmly and he says, "Be quiet." Which for him means he's doing all right. He's been in a behavior class for several years now and believes that he's been victimized by the situation because he feels he hasn't learned all that much. This is probably true and I've told him so. But he also refuses to do his work a lot of the time. He'll sit there for 45 minutes until the period is over because he thinks he's getting revenge on you. He's also really afraid of failing and gets frustrated easily when he can't do the work.

Z has made tremendous strides this year. Last year he was a desk thrower and would pound his head against the wall when he was frustrated. He spent a lot of last year in an office cubicle because that's where he felt comfortable. He refused to go to mainstream classes and there are some amazing stories about his interactions with his mom on school grounds. This year, other than a little binder slamming and stomping around, he's had zero intense behavior issues. He goes to all mainstream classes and does well for the most part.

We've arranged various modifications and accomodations for him this year. One of which is that he gets excused from an assignment every time he does another assignment - it's a two for one deal. Between his work refusal, below-grade level achievement and frequent absences, he just can't keep up. When he sees that he's missing 14 assignments in one class he can't see that it's largely of his own doing and he just wants to throw in the towel. So, we've got this accomodation worked out to keep him motivated.

One of his teachers really feels like this is doing a diservice to Z in some ways because we can modify and accomodate until we're blue in the face and then eventually he's going out in the world in which there are very few accommodations for people who don't fit the mold. Obviously, this is not the way we want it to be, but he's right to point out that this is the way it is. He's getting special ed schooling but there's no special ed life out there. He's going to have to show up for work and finish jobs as they're assigned. He's not going to be able to berate people for not knowing how to do something and he's going to have be somewhat personable to his employers. If not, it's unlikely he's going to be able to participate meaningfully in society. Z's issues are compounded by the fact that his disability is "invisible": he has some intense anxiety issues and victimization issues but he looks like a typical person - albeit a bit withdrawn and quiet.

Some folks, like the above mentioned teacher, just don't see that he's disabled and he's not going to magically be "cured". This is who Z is. And he rules. He's hilarious and smart. He knows way more about cars and all things mechanical than I ever will. It's too bad that most people will write him off for being a difficult person because he's got a very rich personality and it's been rewarding to know him this year. More than likely he'll be a mechanic of some sort when he gets out of high school and make more money than any one who ever tried to teach him.

Rational Response Vol. 2

I got a new student two months ago that I'll call RB here.  RB came to us from a nearby district but it was quite some time before his file arrived.  This is worrisome with students who are in a behavior program because the behaviors can vary from "Why is she in a behavior program?" to "How is he not in residential care?"  So it's good to receive a file beforehand so we can have some idea of what is difficult for a student and know what sort of behaviors are typical.

Well, RB started without the file in hand and he did great:  completed classwork, participated in class, wasn't disruptive at all....pretty impressive.  Most students start at a new school like this so I knew it was just a matter of time before we saw what landed him in a behavior program.  Sure enough, after the first two weeks I noticed he had stopped handing in work.  Then I noticed that the reports of his excellent behavior were somewhat exaggerated- he didn't disrupt class but he also didn't really do much work.  He flew under the radar as it were.  And then I got his file.

The file noted that RB had been a runner at one of his schools.  By this I mean that when he got frustrated he would leave school and run away.  This is why it's important to have a file ahead of time -I would never have pegged RB as a runner and I hadn't planned on this possibility.  Thankfully, he hasn't run yet and says he doesn't do that anymore.  Instead - he just refuses to do work at times.  He has a hard time getting along with an educational assistant that is pretty much loved by all and has gotten himself kicked out of several classes for simply sitting there without even looking at the work he's been assigned.  RB also has some severe attentional issues.  When you're talking to him you can see his eyes glaze over after saying literally one word to him.  I'm not exaggerating here.  I've said, "RB," to him to get his attention.  He'll look at me and than before I can get the next word out he'll already have a far away look in his eye that I know now means he's not listening anymore.  

In sum, he has a history of running from and cutting school and being extremely disruptive and disrespectful.  He's currently refusing to do work (even with help from assistants, myself and his teachers and with modified work) and he's not making friends even with several students making friendly overtures.

Here's why this is rational:  his father has disappeared from his life as of a year ago, his  stepfather just left the family, his mother is completely disengaged from parenting, all three of his older brothers hit him at times, one of his brothers was removed for abusing RB and has just come back home, RB has received no counselling for what happened, the brother closest in age to RB (just one grade above him) does the parenting.  Refusing to care about learning pre-algebra or the Greeks seems really rational to me.  

The Rational Response

A therapist conducted a home visit in order to begin serving a student of mine whom I'll call C. C has struggled in school but his general trend this year has been up and up- which has been really gratifying given that his regular ed teachers wanted to give up on him immediately and seek outside placement. C has needs that stretch outside of the school setting so I referred him to a program that is a "wrap around" service- so-called because it covers what the school isn't covering thus providing service in areas that would otherwise be left open. When the therapist left the home after the interview he immediately filed a report with child services because the home is a complete mess and the baby in the family - whom C deeply loves - was gnawing on an oil bottle. (I know, it seems unbelievable but that's what he reported.) Most of my students have issues of neglect at home and though the extent of the neglect in this case is extreme the presence of it is not surprising. What is surprising is how C has been responding to it.
Lately, C has been amazing. He hasn't been suspended in months and months. He's been on time for classes and he's currently passing all of his classes. His behavior has been such that you would never guess that he is in a behavior program or is labelled as emotionally disturbed. This seems irrational to me. If I were going home to what C goes home to I wouldn't take the time to learn how to find the area of circles or how to conduct a scientific inquiry. I would break things. I would hit people. I would curse/cuss/swear at the principal. That seems like a rational response to the situation to me.
Two points here: when C does exhibit odd behavior (growling, foaming, disrespectful/foul language to adults) it's rather easy to have a lot of patience with him because I know what he has to live with. Also, we have to accept that learning capitalization or how to multiply fractions isn't going to be that high on some students' priority lists and it's for good reasons.

On Not Feeling too Good

For most of my students, I'm the only responsible adult in their lives. By responsible I mean different things for different students - being consistently present, being patient, attending to their needs, etc. Since I know that I do a lot for my students and that they're all doing better in school than they would otherwise it would be easy to get a big head about this and congratulate myself for being such a hero. Fortunately for me my students rarely say thank you. They rarely ask politely for anything. They'll be really upset if their flavor of granola bar is missing rather than being psyched they're getting anything. And this makes sense, I think. You really shouldn't have to be grateful for being fed. You should actually feel entitled to help in school. I don't think my students are unreasonable when they aren't thankful because they're only getting what they deserve. So this keeps my ego in check (somewhat, anyway). There's not much need for congratulations when a kid gets what he or she needs.

3 for Electives

Three of my students are getting out of one of my two periods with them so they can attend an elective class. It's difficult to get extra services to kids in the school day without removing them from something but it's too bad that they have had to miss elective all year. Fortunately, they're been doing so great that they're going to be able to spend the last third of the year in a tech-ed class that they all really like.

The silly thing is that this technically changes their placements - which is a big special education deal. Right now they all receive regular education with 21-60% special classes. The change would drop them to under 21%- technically a different placement. So I have to notify their IEP teams (a gen. ed teacher, parent, district rep. and me), revise their IEPs, send home meeting notices, hold the meeting, finalize the IEP and send the letter home that says we did what we said we were going to. All for what amounts to a schedule change. And it's OK of course. I've actually done every thing except for the actuall meetings and send the follow up letter but I did all the prepatory stuff instead of going to class with another student.

This is not to say that these things aren't important- having a process can help prevent abuse. But I called all the parents to see what they thought, I spoke with their teachers & administrators and we're all on-board. We stil have to have the meeting and do all the paper work that comes along with it. I don't mean to whine but my eyes are going to fall out of my head if I have to look at a computer any more.

ED or CD?

I have a new student who, like most of my students, is labelled as emotionally disturbed. He mostly maintains in the classroom fine but he has conflicts with male peers that lead him to some extreme behavior. This behavior has manifested as this student causing serious injury to other students as well threatening students, staff and parents (with some truly vile language). Because he is a student who qualifies as needing special education a school's ability to punish him is limited. Basically you can suspend a kid for ten days after which you need to determine whether his behavior is a result of his disability. If it is, you can't suspend, never mind expel the student.

None of that is terribly interesting to me because I'm not much for punishment since it's mostly a form of revenge. However, the rub is that if a student as violent as this one gets into trouble with the law he would then be able to access all sorts of resources that he would otherwise not be able to access. So, there's been some discussion of reevaluating this student to determine if he truly is emotionally disturbed. It could be the case that he simply has a conduct disorder. The former is a label served by special education, and thus protected by that ten day suspension rule I mentioned, and the latter is not. So you can suspend and expel a student labelled as CD but not one labelled ED. Makes perfect sense, right? It gets worse.

If he's labelled CD the county would have to pick up the tab on whatever services he receives because it would be outside of school. This is strong incentive in a school district feeling a pretty serious economic crunch. Also, there's the possibility of this student ending up as part of the juvenile deliquent system. And there's some suggestion that this may be what he really needs. It's hard to argue with that when you read what he's done to other kids. But it's not hard to argue with that when he sits in your class and smiles at jokes in the novel we're reading.

Home friends, school enemies

I have a very social phobic 8th grader and a far too social 6th grader. They can't really be in the same room together without lobbing comments at each other because they make each other so anxious. I always try to avoid having them in the same place at the same time but today there was some overlap. So one started to say something about the other being crazy and the other says something about hurting the first one, etc, etc. I got the 6th grader calm enough to go to his next class which quieted the 8th grader down. However, he was still too anxious to do any work so we just talked for 20 minutes.

When I asked him about why he doesn't like the 6th grader he told me that they get along fine when P. is there. I asked him to explain and he told me that the 6th grader and their mutual friend P. often stop by his house on the weekends and they all play or hang out or whatever. It turns out that they all live quite near each other and spend a lot of time together away from school. I found this all so strange- they're buddies at home but foes at school. What could cause this?

My hypothesis is that they do things at home which would get them into trouble at school and that makes them nervous. Also, the 6th grader is relatively popular while the 8th grader isn't. It wouldn't be "cool" to be seen hanging out in school together. Or something like that. Though it's my job to seek to understand the minds of these students, in social situations like this, they remain obscure.

New Students

I'm getting two new students. One has already started and seems like a very sweet kid. His file reads like he's got some serious behavior issues and he's coming from a private school paid for by his previous district. He says "please" and "excuse me." Not typical for most students with behavior disorders. Today's journal question was, "Would you rather be twice as strong or twice as smart as you are right now?" He said, "Twice as smart because I come from a difficult background."

My other new one hasn't started yet but he's a 13 year old, 180 pound 6th grader with a history of drug use and who is under investigation for arson. Sweet. More to come I'm sure.

Fruits and vegetables are the new candy

Many of my students come to school without having eaten breakfast (and sometimes dinner). This is a need that I can help them with. I've been buying granola bars by the ton in order to combat their hunger. I have them in a cabinet where students can help themselves. I get the generic version of the Nature's Valley granola bars that you can get just about any where. It's kind of a pain because they're a bit expensive and they're tasty so I think students eat them when they just feel like eating rather than just when they're actually hungry. And I sometimes eat one at lunch though I bring plenty food to eat- just something to do while I do paperwork.

Yesterday, the only variety I had left were "Honey & Oat" - an unpopular flavor. One student who was having a really rough day told me he hadn't really eaten in the last 12 hours but he didn't like the granola bars. I told him the only other thing I had was an apple. He was psyched to eat an apple and devoured it. So I cracked that I'll just buy apples for everybody from now on. This was met with, "Yeah!" 's all around. Then another student said, "And celery. I love celery." Followed by, "Broccoli would be good too. But keep it in the fridge."

So today I'm going to buy a bunch of apples.

Bribery

In the parlance of behavior management systems, rewards or incentives are code for bribes. "If a student gets an A she is rewarded with a sticker. In order to have control of your class, you should have an incentive system in place." These systems are quite common place and they generally fades out quickly after elementary school as most teachers and administrators favor moving toward intrinsic rewards for academic achievement. (Or at least that's what they claim. An 'A' on a report card isn't exactly intrinsic.) However, the use of incentives is widely accepted and encouraged in behavior programs of all ages and grade levels including the initial design for the program I currently teach in.

I see most of my students twice a day- the first period we work on self-management skills and the second period, which is the last period of the day, we work on some basic study skills and we do homework. Originally, the last period was conceived of as 'reward time' for those students who earned it. A student would earn this reward time by meeting a goal of attaining a certain number of points that are given out by their teachers throughout their day and recorded on a behavior communication form. I was supposed to have games and computers available for the students and I could allow them to break school rules regarding use of portable music and video game players. But we haven't really ever gone there because of this guy whose writing hipped me to the fact that rewards don't really work the way we want them to. So initially, I was running the program with zero rewards. Things have changed a bit since then.

My students have to travel throughout the day with the behavior communication form so that there is a record of quantitative data of their progress towards the goals on their IEPs- which are reflected by the goals on these behavior sheets. A problem I had run into though is because I wasn't rewarding them like they were used to there was no motivation to actually complete the form. So I made the decision to institute a reward system for turning in a completed behavior communication form with a parent signature. Students earn points toward rewards that they have selected. For most students these rewards are small toys, candy. magazines or soda which they can get right before lunch or at the end of the day.

This worked pretty well so I began to rewarding points for other similar activities: writing down their homework in their planners and preparing their own behavior sheets with their individual goals ahead of time. I reasoned (rationalized?) that these are all behaviors that don't really translate to any thing meaningful outside of school so there shouldn't be much intrinsically rewarding about them. Thus, extrinsic rewards should be OK. I drew the line at rewarding students for their actual classroom behavior.

But two students continued to be completely unmotivated by academic success and continuously got themselves into trouble. Their teachers and parents were getting tired of it. One parent even started to talk about requesting a publicly-funded private school setting for her child. At this point, with...encouragement from the guidance counselor and school psych I began tallying up all the points the students earned throughout the day on their behavior sheets. What had simply been data for use in tracking progress toward goals now became part of a token economy. So quite clearly, these two students are being bribed to behave.

Discussing the merits of incentive systems is not of interest to me at this time. Suffice it to say that I believe they should be avoided. Yet, here I am, running a reward system in my own classroom.

It's my hope that I can phase these rewards out and that the the young age of most of my students gives me enough time to expose them to academic and positive social success so that these become the incentives and not Skittles. Until then, the bribery will continue.

Motivation

Apparently my school hires a motivational speaker every year. Last year a person who was born without arms due to exposure to Thalidimide spoke. He also played drums and piano in front of everyone. Folks were amazed. This year they hired a person with spinal cord injury who uses a power chair with mouth controllers. He had some good messages, including how terrible Million Dollar Baby is, but overall he was so-so.

It's hard for me to decide what to think of this speaker. This person overcame some serious adversity to rejoin the workforce, become a husband and father and generally get on with his life after an unplanned life-changing event. Unplanned life-changing events are what most of our at-risk students struggle with. The speaker's message was that problems can make you stronger or bitter. OK, true.

But this person only became a motivational speaker when he couldn't get a job as a school counselor (after fininshing his master's degree in that field). So...he's using his disability to make a living in the only way that the non-disabled world will let him. Good for him to find a hole to sneak through but that's not actually the way it should have to be. Furthermore, he wasn't a very good motivational speaker and he leaned on some traditional tropes that the non-disabled world pushes when gazing at people with disabilities (fear of dependence being the primary one). The students were extremely respectful and many students went to speak to him afterwards so I guess they found it worthy of their time.

It seemed to me that the message overall was that despite his disability he was happy and productive. Seems obvious to me but I guess it hasn't always been so and everyone has to hear this somewhere. Still, all those kids staring at the person in the wheelchair....

Tone

Through speaking with people who know me it's become obvious that this blog is a bit of a downer. I don't know how to lighten the tone and I don't want it to sound like this job is always so heavy. I work with middle school kids because they're hilarious. My job involves hanging out with kids all day. And I don't even have a set curriculum that I have to get them through. I'm not held accountable for their test scores. And their behavior is not thought of as a reflection of my work. Like everyone I would rather work less - 30 hours a week would be about right - but I love my job. There's no other career type of job I can imagine having. So, no worries about me. I report to you what may be heavy and tragic but there's a lot of laughter and fun. My job rules.

Slow Week

There were no real emergencies this week but a slow week here is rather eventful anyway. For your enjoyment and edification (and edubacation), what follows is a list of things that happened during this uneventful week to the ten students I currently have on my caseload:

- a student who had been spitting out his meds decided he was going to take it now because he could notice a decline in his behavior when he was off his meds
- a student asked if he could have his schedule switched so that he would have no classes with his best friend because now, after failing every thing in the 1st marking period, he wants to get good grades and can't do that when his best friend is around
- 4 students caught up completely on all of their missing work
- a plan was formulated with an outside agency to get one student help with drug use
- I was called an idiot 4 times by a student who loves me (He didn't understand his math test; he completed it later following some reteaching.)
- two students came all week without their meds - this caused endless quiet cursing on the part of one and chasing, spitting and general over-excitement on the part of the other
- a student was able to attend the holiday dance for the first time in three years
- two students attended principal's lunch on the recommendation of their general education teachers
- a parent told me her child could decide for himself whether to take his meds or not and she was only doing it to satisfy "outside sources"
- a student became the highest achiever in his math class to date for the 2nd marking period
- a student received in-school suspension for wearing gang related apparel to school
- a student was suspended for two days for threatening and intimidating another student
- a student received five stitches when another student kicked open a door that smacked him in the face
- our most notorious work avoider completed the final draft of a major project in his humanities class
- a student couldn't stop talking about getting to visit his dad this coming week
- ditto for another student but his mom
- a student made a song using Garage Band and played it for me

And more, always more.

Return to Medlandia

I asked a student to promise to stop by the nurse's office to take his meds on his way from my class to lunch. This is a student who doesn't like to take his meds and whom I've had to walk to the nurse's office in order to ensure that he got there. Before I started escorting him he would skip it and have to be called out of his class and to the nurses office following lunch. Though he promised he would actually do it this time, I found out he skipped the office and went straight to lunch when I stopped by the nurse's office five minutes later. So I tracked him down in the cafeteria where he was chowing on a plate of nachos. I asked him why he didn't stop by the nurse's office to take his meds and he said, "Because it's Friday." That seemed reasonable to me. I suppose I could have coerced him into leaving the cafeteria right then or told him he couldn't go to recess now or taken some other form of revenge. But I just asked him to take his meds before he went to his class after recess. He did.

Meds? Meds. Meds!

One of my students takes a very small dosage of meds for ADHD. This student just told us he has been faking it for the past three weeks. He says that when he takes the meds he can focus but he can't do any thing. When he doesn't take his meds he can learn and do whatever he wants. This is true, I think. He's one of those rare people who can actually multi-task if one of the tasks is listening and the other doesn't require much concentration. The part he leaves out is that he gets frustrated and destructive when he's off his meds. But he sat in the office and cut box tops for an hour quite happily. At that point he could talk a little bit about what got him removed from class. Today I bought a football to play catch with him when he needs to have something in his hands when he's frustrated. We'll see.

Another student is perfectly well behaved and hardworking here. At home he throws things, yells at his guardian, walks out of the house and possibly hits people. Apparently he takes his meds regularly.

A third student had a very long history of violent incidents and was 5 years behind in reading and math. He recently was transferred to a therapeutic day program. He's never been on meds.

Nice try?

One of my students has been having a serious attendance problem. Working with him we rearranged the schedule so that this student would be an office aid first period and miss a class with a teacher this student dislikes. The receptionist has plenty of help first period but she decided that this student needed the support so she would find something for this student to do. I worked it out with this student's teachers, administrator and guidance counselor. The guidance secretary immediately changed the schedule and I gave the brand new schedule to the student 8th period yesterday. The student was psyched. The student didn't come to school today.

UPDATE (12/5/06): The student came today after missing 5 days. Right away he learned how to find the slope of a line and finished the homework the math teacher assigned. I made him promise that he would come in again tomorrow.

12/7/06: Three days in a row! Also we've arranged to have help from outside agencies come to the school for his mental health and attendance issues.